In accordance with recent technological developments, various type personal computers, such as desktops, towers and notebooks, have been produced and are being sold. Among them, notebook computers are battery-operated personal computers designed while taking portability into consideration.
In general, a notebook computer has a "clam shell" structure constituted by the main body of the device and a lid member rotatably hinged at the rear edge of the main body. The main body of the device incorporates, for example, a motherboard on which a CPU, a memory and peripheral controller chips are mounted. Various peripheral devices, such as a hard disk drive (HDD), a floppy disk drive (FDD) and a CD-ROM drive (none of them shown) are also accommodated into the main body. Further, a keyboard unit having a plurality of keys is provided on the top face of the main body. A pointing device, such as a "TrackPoint," may be mounted on the keyboard unit. A liquid crystal display (LCD) unit having a diagonal measurement of greater than ten and less than twenty inches is embedded in the lid member. FIG. 5 shows the outlook design of a conventional notebook computer.
A user of a notebook computer opens its lid member relative to the main body, so as to use the keyboard and the display device. When the user carries or stores the notebook computer, he or she closes the lid member against the main body with the keyboard and the surface of the display device inside, so that they can be protected from unexpected impacts.
As is well known to those having ordinary skill in the art, it is preferable for portability that a notebook computers be small. That is, a smaller footprint and thinner bottom area of the notebook computer is better. Ordinarily, the thickness of the computer is determined by the thicknesses of the circuit components and the peripheral devices accommodated into the main body of a computer, and the footprint also depends on the arrangement of the respective circuit components and the peripheral devices and the area coupled by the LCD unit in the lid member.
Lately, as improved liquid crystal fabrication techniques have become available, notebook computers having LCD units of greater than 12 inches are no longer a rarity (the LCD unit sizes are the diagonal widths in inches of the display screens). As the size of LCD displays increase, the footprints of notebook computers will grow proportionately.
FIG. 6 shows the assembly of the lid member of a notebook computer. Screws are inserted, in the direction indicated by the lines, into the LCD unit plane at five places: at the upper and lower corners on the left side, and at upper and lower positions and at the center along the right side edge, so that the LCD unit is secured to a rear cover. Hinges are mounted at the right and left ends of the rear cover, and the other ends of the hinges are attached the main body of the computer (not shown), so that the lid member can be rotatably supported by the main body.
In FIG. 6, the footprint of the lid member is extended outward from the circumferential edge of the LCD unit by a volume the equivalent in size of the area into which the screws are inserted, i.e., that corresponds to the sizes of the heads of the screws.
In this example, since the LCD unit is directly attached to the rear cover, when the cover is opened or closed a twisting force is directly imposed on the LCD unit. That is, the LCD unit may be damaged when external force is applied to it. Especially when the rear cover is made of a less rigid material, such as plastic, the load imposed on the LCD unit would be increased.
Furthermore, in this example, since the LCD unit is secured to the rear cover separately from the hinges, the number of the screws required is increased, and the assembly process is more complex.
It is, therefore, one object of the present invention to provide a superior display assembly in which is mounted a liquid crystal display (LCD) unit constituted by liquid crystal, and a light conductive plate for guiding light.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a superior display assembly that is rotatably hinged upon an information processing apparatus.
It is an additional object of the present invention to provide a display assembly that contributes to an increase in the size of the liquid crystal.